


A Rendezvous with Death

by anerdintime



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Coping with death specifically, Death, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, No Spoilers, Nostalgia, it's sad did I say that yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anerdintime/pseuds/anerdintime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the spring there are flowers.</p><p>They sprout on the hills, in gardens, and in the nooks and crannies of everyday life, relaxing into open fields where bodies lay littered in the grass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rendezvous with Death

Jean has nightmares.

They are of blood and dust and sweat, coating his throat and restricting his breathing, sliding down into the pit of his stomach and settling there permanently. They crawl under his skin, prickling and sharp and biting, clawing at his lungs—sickening, hot—fleeting. They pervade his senses scaling the walls that he’s built around himself.

He sees rot.

He sees death.

He sees _him_.

He wakes up in a stupor, his throat raw and skin burning, and there is always blood. It dries under his bitten nails, cracked and crusty, a reminder that he can’t escape—that he can’t breathe, that he can’t sleep, that he can’t _cope_.

He can’t cope.

_Why can’t he cope?_

So he sits there, in the darkness, surrounded by the living, his hands limp in his lap. The blanket pools around his waist, ugly and green, and he sees in it what he wants to see beside him. But the ugly green blanket offers no condolences. It’s ripped on one side and he presses the corner of it to his face, breathing, breathing, _breathing_.

No one is awake to see him cry.

* * *

 When he’s sober, Armin asks if he’s alright.

There’s a tight-lipped retort building at the back of his throat, but it gets trapped there as he realizes what he wants to say:

_I’m broken. I’m broken. I’m broken._

The mantra fades into the background on some days, and screams at him on others, incessant and demanding. He walks away with little dignity and his mouth set in a tight line, a phantom limb aching in the space beside him.

He doesn’t want to know how they look at him as he passes the stables.

So he doesn’t look at them.

* * *

 They don’t bury the bodies—they don’t have the space.

Jean wants to laugh as he looks at the pyre, but his muscles won’t cooperate and his jaw hurts from the strain of his teeth clenching together involuntarily. His fingernails press so hard against his palm that he feels skin break.

 _How pathetic_ , he thinks, _we can’t even bury the dead_.

Ash floats away on the wind, taken to a place where the living can’t follow.

There's a morbid yearning for it, in the depth of his being, calling for an end to the Hell that his life has become. But he forces himself to watch the flames eating up its offerings, scorching the earth beneath it, creating it anew.

New isn't special.

 _New_ is just another word for vulnerable.

* * *

 The next nightmare is worse and he wakes up screaming.

Thrashing his arms, he doesn't realize he's back in the bunker, and the hands that grasp at his don't feel like their friendly. He doesn’t register what’s happening until he punches Armin in the face, and there’s an apology poised at the tip of his tongue until Eren makes some asshole comment and instead he throws off the wrinkled blanket and stalks out of the room.

It’s quieter outside.

And under the moon and stars, he stares down at his bloodied hands and can’t remember what being alive even feels like anymore.

When Eren stomps out of the building, he regrets it. He regrets everything.

He holds his head in his hands and crouches to the ground, his knees knocking together. It rips through him like a tidal wave, crashing against the silence of the night, raw and unfair, something animal and foreign. His shoulders shake with the release, and he tries to catch himself as he retches, throaty and harsh. He wipes his mouth and falls back, hitting the ground hard. He doesn't want to think about Trost. He doesn't want to think about his dream.

He doesn't want to think at all.

And for once, Eren shuts his mouth.

They stay there until the sun rises, the silence wrapped around them in a thick blanket, and none of the others come to find them.

* * *

  _He_ was always there, Jean thinks.

 _He_ is always dead, Jean knows.

 _He_ is never there at all.

* * *

 Jean sits underneath a tree one day—the one that he and Marco sat down under after training, and had conversations about what would happen after this monstrosity of a life was over. He stopped short one sentence and Marco laughed—the ringing in his ears now a hollow sound. He realizes now what he realized then: the sun on Marco's face at that moment made his skin glow, his freckles bursting staccato across his skin and he's what Jean wants on good days.

He knows.

He knows, _he knows_.

Somehow he still wants to hear it, but empty air never responds.

* * *

  _I wonder how he died._

_I wonder what he thought of._

_I wonder what he loved._

He loved making flower chains in the summer heat and his siblings and his mother. He loved the sound of laughter, the sound of music, the sound of rushing water on a hot day. He loved the way Jean scowled at Eren like a jealous brother, the way that Sasha coveted her food, the way the sun set in the evening. He loved thunderstorms and the spring breeze, old crippled cats, and feisty kids. He loved _Jean_ , of all things.

Jean sits there and stares fixedly at his hands, the jagged scars and callouses roughening the once smooth contours of his fingers. He doesn’t even know what he loves, because he only knows what he hates.

He hates that he didn't have enough time. He hates that life has slipped through his cupped hands, falling through his fingers like sand. He hates that he never told him, his voice both cracked and frayed at the edges, pushing for what he considered fleeting memories spread out against a grotesque backdrop.

Maybe he loved him, too.

Maybe he should have told him.

Jean knows that in any case, he'll never get to.

* * *

 In the spring there are flowers.

They sprout on the hills, in gardens, and in the nooks and crannies of everyday life, relaxing into open fields where bodies lay littered in the grass.

Jean doesn't know how many are dead this time, and he tells himself that he's doing this for him, his 3D Maneuver Gear a heavy and solid weight at his sides. It's dented in places it shouldn't be, but Jean can't bear to think that it needs to be repaired until it's absolutely necessary—he holds in his hands a piece of himself as much as it was a piece of him.

He stops at the crest of the next hill, steam rising from a few hundred meters to the west, and it hits him hard, knocking him back a step. His nightmares, his fears, his trepidation—all of it floods his senses. He smells the stench of rotting flesh, the coppery undertones of fresh blood, the sickening, debilitating death that awaits them all. This war won't end here. It may be years, maybe even hundreds, before humanity is even granted a sliver of the freedom that they're struggling for now.

As soldiers regroup, he kisses the handle, the metal cool on his chapped lips.

War is a price.

And war is never kind.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title was taken from "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger, who wrote specifically about the Great War in his poem. I really enjoy reading wartime poetry, especially World War poetry, so this fic is a result of that fascination in conjunction with a novel we're currently reading for one of my classes about a World War II veteran suffering from PTSD. So, obviously I just had to write this. 
> 
> Exactly this.
> 
> I was thinking about actually writing more fics as an exercise in character studies (also an excuse to just start writing fanfiction again for no reason. My sixth grade self would be proud). I'm actually pretty self-conscious with fics, even though I'm super confident in my original work, ahaha. So it'd be pushing myself out of my comfort zone. 
> 
> What do you think?


End file.
